Friday, October 7, 2011

Condemned to live in the country in which spied

This Friday's agent René González Cuban intelligence out of jail in northern Florida where he has spent the last 13 years serving a sentence for espionage to continue living in a country that does not want to be and in which no one wants it to be, even its most ardent supporters.

Gonzalez is one of the five Cubans who were arrested in 1998 and sentenced to various prison terms for form a network-known as the Wasp, who worked as agents of government of Cuba.
On the island are known as the "Five Heroes, "while in the U.S. are the" Five Spies "after being convicted in a Miami court for "plotters" and agents aliens without the necessary registration with the U.S. government.
Havana has consistently sought release of the five, whom he describes as "fighters freedom of the Cuban people "who watched the exile groups based in Miami to prevent alleged "terrorist" actions against the island.
Now Gonzales becomes the first group released from prison, but will not return to Cuba, because you must spend three years on "supervised release" somewhere in the U.S.
While some believe that could be a danger to the country and the exile community, others stress that I would be running the risk the Cuban.Read More... http://www.bbc.co.uk

Cuban spy’s wife says she worries his life is in danger on eve of parole in United States

HAVANA — The life of a Cuban intelligence officer jailed in the U.S. will be in danger from members of the Cuban exile community if he is forced to serve parole there, his wife said Thursday on the eve of his release.
Rene Gonzalez, a dual U.S.-Cuban citizen, petitioned a judge to let him return to his family in Cuba after he gets out of a federal penitentiary in Marianna, Florida, on Friday. But last month, a judge declined to alter the original sentencing requirement that Gonzalez serve three years of parole in the United States.Read More...

To those who labor under the misconception that Fidel Castro’s regime was incapable of maintaining a secret pipeline to a Lee Oswald, or not inclined to authorize and/or condone assassinations, an overview of Castro’s spy agencies might prove instructive. Traditionally, it has been infinitely easier to obtain operational details and internal structural layouts for the offices of America’s secret warriors than for those of its intelligence adversaries. This is especially true for Cuba’s spy apparatus. Given the relative transparency of the US government, thousands of books and monographs have been written on CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc. But for those seeking to determine if Cuba’s spooks were prone to instigate (or even condone, as in the Kennedy case) foreign assassinations, it has been near impossible to get answers. However, when one pieces together testimony, CIA debriefs, and interviews from Cuba’s spy defectors, some very close to the top of its bureaucracy, a consistent and far different picture emerges of Cuba’s intel modus operandi than most would assume. Read More...

An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers (1929-77). Confronted with the evidence of his nation's espionage, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet agent in the first-ever U.S.-USSR "spy swap." Read More...

THRASHER, John S., journalist, born in Portland, Maine, in 1817; died in Galveston, Texas, 10 November, 1879. While he was a youth his parents removed to Havana, Cuba, where he followed for some time a successful mercantile career, but abandoned it for journalism, purchasing, in 1849, the "Faro Industrial," which was then the only Liberal newspaper. In September, 1851, his paper was suppressed, and he was condemned by court-martial to ten years' imprisonment with hard labor at Ceuta and perpetual banishment from Cuba. After several months the United States minister at Madrid secured his release. He afterward established in New Orleans a Sunday journal called the "Beacon of Cuba," and in 1853-'5 was an active member of the junta that organized a filibustering expedition to be led by General John A. Quitman. When the United States authorities prevented the departure of this expedition, Thrasher went to New York city. For several years he travelled in Central and South America as a newspaper correspondent, and edited the "Noticioso de Nuevo York," a journal devoted to the interests of Spanish-American countries. Marrying a lady whose property was in Texas, he removed to the south, and remained there during the civil war, acting as agent for the associated press at Atlanta. After the war he edited for several years Frank Leslie's " Ilustracion Americana" in New York city, and afterward resided in Galveston. He published a translation of Alexander von Humboldt's "Personal Narrative of Travels," with notes and an introductory essay (New York, 1856), also many essays on the social, commercial, and political conditions of Cuba.

Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889